The Chancellor Says . . .

If you look across the country now, and in higher
education in particular, race relations continue
to be a challenge. At NC State, we’re trying to be
proactive about this work. We’re not responding to one single event—we’re just trying to make
sure as a community that we are working on
diversity and inclusion, having conversations
to make sure all the people we have here feel
empowered to learn and grow without fear of being treated wrongly.

I wanted to say to campus, “We’re all thinking about this. We’re
working on this.”
To work in a multicultural environment, which America is, we have
to, to the extent possible, understand the culture of others and the
background of others. We need to be sensitive to issues that underrepresented groups have faced throughout history. Many students
coming here are exposed to more diversity than they ever have been
in their lives. This is a place you can become
more competent and have a deeper understanding of those cultures. One of the reasons
this is important is because industries that
hire our graduates are looking for diversity
in their workplaces—it increases the quality
of the work because you’ve got multiple
cultures coming together to solve a problem.

We know people that are studying here would like to see themselves
reflected in those that are teaching them, so having a diverse faculty
is important. The provost is launching an emerging scholars program for young underrepresented faculty to help them develop at
NC State and, hopefully, support them in a way that they will be
encouraged to stay. One of the challenges we face in society is the
speed with which communication travels. Social media, electronic
communication vehicles give people the ability to say hateful things
anonymously. We can’t protect people from that, we can’t outlaw
that. But when we have hate language or events that create an
unwelcoming environment, we can bring a team of people together
that have expertise to assess whatever’s happened.

Certainly we would love to have higher administration that is
reflective of society, and we strive with every search to generate
interest from diverse candidates. We will always hire people who
are in the best position to move NC State forward.